the lonesome lows don't quite go away overnight

In March, I was mostly watching films. In general terms not that many films - five new-to-me films - but given last year’s hideously low number of films that weren’t re-watches I’m going to call it a victory. It took me until August to get to this many films last year, so while my new-to-me books is still looking grim and my audio series list doesn’t bear mentioning, at least my film watching is fairly healthy.

In my quest to actually get something written, given the general uptick in watching new-to-me films, I went on a binge of documentaries in the Storyville strand on iPlayer, and wrote them up for the film blog. (I’ve been full of the desire to write but seriously lacking the inspiration for it.) I also decided after K-pop Demon Hunters that I’d try and watch a bunch of last year’s films that I missed and write those up too, but I only managed Sinners though in fairness, it was an absolute banger. (They deserved every last nomination, acting and sound in particular.) I’m really glad I managed to see it in the cinema - my local arthouse cinema was screening it ahead of the Oscars so I saw it with like 20 other people who’d all either seen it before and loved it or like me and had missed it the first time and were keen to be impressed, it was a good audience vibe, is what I’m saying - because the sound was immense, it really benefited from having the big screen good sound system experience. Speaking of films that benefited from being on the big screen, I saw Project Hail Mary in the cinema this week. Just a delight. (Rocky!) Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller acting their wee hearts out in what is ultimately quite a silly film. Too long obviously, but honestly I barely cared. (Also I’m not really across a lot of pop music, but what do you mean Harry Styles wrote that song? I presumed it was a cover of something 70s but no it’s just a homage to Bowie and glamrock, significantly more impressed with that lad’s talents now. Though mostly I need me a copy of Sandra Hüller singing it.) And, it has my favourite Beatles song in it. There’s a LEGO set I can’t justify but really, really want.

With the election period upon us, I figured what I actually needed was a nice straight-forward knitting project to work on while on the road and generally too brain-fried to deal with anything too complicated. So I’m making a loop scarf in a basic shell pattern - it’s basically one row of straight forward lace shaping and one row of purl stitch, knit until you run out of wool - in alternating colours, so is a nice way to use up a set of hand-dyed mini-skeins that I bought during lockdown and have been waiting for a project since then. It’s excellent TV knitting, though mostly I’ve been doing it while catching up on my podcast backlog. (I’ve spent a lot of this weekend catching up on Gastropod and 99% Invisible) I’m hoping to do a bit more actual TV watching, there’s a bunch of things serieses I want to tackle, but I’m not going to talk about those plans until I’ve actually started them in the hope that they’ll actually happen. It’s always such a crapshoot these last few years what will and won’t catch and hold my attention on that front.